Daniel Bell

Daniel Bell, 1919–2011, American sociologist, b. New York City as Daniel Bolotsky, grad. City College (1939), Columbia (Ph.D., 1960). His immigrant parents changed their surname when he was 13. Bell taught at the Univ. of Chicago, Columbia, and Harvard. His interests ranged widely, and as a noted public intellectual he spoke and wrote on many topics. His many subjects of study included contemporary capitalist society and the individual's place within it, socialism's failure in the United States, capitalism's change from a manufacturing to a service and consumerist base, and the vulgarization of modern culture. He prophesied the coming of an
"information society"
and of industries reliant on science and technology. Bell also was the editor of several periodicals, notably The Public Interest (1965–72), which he cofounded. Among his best-known books are The End of Ideology (1960), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1978).